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Toontrack Superior Drummer...
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Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 EDU Version 25 License Pack - Press Reviews |
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| Reviewed by: Phil Heeley, Teaching & Learning Manager for Music Technology & Youth Culture
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| September 2008 |
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Full installation requires a recommended 25gig hard drive space, modern G5, Intel or AMD multicore CPU with 2GB RAM or more. It wasn’t long ago when this meant selling your granny and investing in the latest greatest memory monster but these days we barely bat an eyelid, armed as we inevitably are with 500 gig internal hard drives and a plethora of external ones. But if you’re a bit too fond of said elderly relative you have the opportunity to choose between four (4) different custom installations - from the 4 GB basic install to the full 20 GB Sound Library.
When you load SD2 there is a 25 second wait whilst the 580mb drum kit is loaded. This was probably made longer by the fact that mine was installed on an external drive. Mmm... what should I do while I wait – read the PDF manual?
Greeting you is a 6 piece kit comprising Kik, snare, two toms on the kik drum and two floor toms. There are five different cymbals not including the hi-hats. All the drums and cymbals have a triangle which when clicked on reveal a choice of different makes and sizes including the type of head. Attention to detail is what SD2 is all about. On closer inspection there is a ghost tom on the kik drum. Clicking on the triangle reveals Tom 3 14” GMS coated heads. Another triangle reveals a cowbell. There are also five ghost cymbals. When you have gone click crazy you are surrounded by a seven piece drum kit, cowbell, hats and eleven cymbals. Well that should keep us going for a bit. Our ram count has now gone up to a whopping 905mb. As well as this you can add X-drums from the library of sounds.
The sounds are what we have come to expect from Toontrack – awesome. (More can be added from Toontrack libraries as well as the ability to read and combine all dfh Superior and EZdrummer sound libraries.) This is thanks to amongst other things Automatic Velocity Mapping. Hits are separated into three categories for velocity mapping purposes: soft hits, gradient hits and hard hits The intensity levels for all soft and all hard hits are the same in their respective categories. They’ve sampled up to 25 soft hits and 25 hard hits on selected instruments and around 15 groups of gradient hits, increasing gradually from soft to hard, each populated with up to 25 hits. Through the unique system developed by Toontrack Music the sampler automatically maps these hits to the appropriate velocity range. By default all soft hits are mapped between MIDI velocities 1 and 20 and played in a random manner. Hard hits are triggered by a MIDI velocity of 127, again in a random manner. Finally gradient hits are triggered between velocities 21 and 126. This can, of course, be changed to suit your taste.
The SD2 is full of features that eliminate the dreaded “machine-gun effect”. For example, while playing or programming, the same sample will never be played twice in a row, unless you want them to. All hits can be randomized which makes it impossible to hear a certain hit sequence or pattern... just like a real drummer never hits the drum exactly the same way twice.
The SUPERIOR instrument not only gives you full on leakage, but will also let you specify which drum leaks into which microphone, a feature useful to keep memory usage low while programming or previewing sounds. In addition, the SD2 goes one step further with its unique “Mic leakage control”, allowing you to set the exact level you would like to hear for each drum in any one microphone. You can just select the microphone that you wish to edit and lower the level of the drum that is causing you trouble. And since this operation can be performed with any microphone in relation to any instrument in the drumkit, the net result is unprecedented flexibility over your virtual session.
The default standard view is that of a drum kit from a slightly elevated viewpoint as roles out in the first endeavour EZ drummer. This is also known as the construction window. But for the die hard traditionalist used to Superior Drummer 1 there is the classic view revealing 19 square boxes not dissimilar from small black and white TV sets. They have exactly the same functionality but just don’t look as appealing and doesn’t software have to look good as well as sound good these days?
Gone is the rather nice midi player from EZDrummer and in its place the excellent new EZPlayer Pro – billed as a multi track MIDI arranger with unlimited layers. This comes as a separate application but loads into your DAW and is far more flexible. You can drop in any midi file you wish and layer one upon another. It comes with a pile of midi files played by Nir Z amongst others. With the loop feature you can decide exactly which section you want to loop resulting in some amazing multi-rhythmic mayhem. You can also drag your own midi looks directly into any of the tracks. The creative potential is enormous.
If you’re familiar with EZDrummer you’ll be aware of the mixer. SD2 has a far more advanced mixer with the ability to add 5 FX on each channel or drum/cymbal. Effects are provided by Sonalksis and have the usual high quality associated with the name. They include EQ, fliter, Gate, Compression and Transient designer with the last two offering the ability to sidechain. These come with some interesting presets to get you started.
I tried triggering the software from the keyboard, the Korg Kontrol pad and the Roland V-Drums and I have to say you cannot distinguish this from a real kit. The end of the session drummer is nigh! |
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